Can infections lead to memory loss?

Some kind of severe brain infections or infections around the brain can cause memory loss, according to the NIH. Other infections, including Lyme disease, syphilis and HIV/AIDS, also can cause memory loss that can affect behavior, judgment, language skill and thinking.

In people who already have Alzheimer’s disease, getting even a minor infection, such as a cold or a stomach bug, can lead to increased memory loss, according to the
American Academy of Neurology (AAN).

For more information about infections and memory loss, talk with your doctor.

Is dementia an age-related disease?

Dementia itself is not a disease, but rather just a word used to describe a variety of symptoms that occur when memory and critical thinking skills stop working the way they should, according to the Alzheimer’s Association(AA).

Dementia describes a decline in a person’s mental abilities that is so severe it causes problems with daily life, according to the AA.

Though memory can be affected by aging, the AA points out that it is a misconception that serious issues with memory are a normal part of growing older.

Some dementia is more common in older people though, according to Premier Physician Network’ physicians. For example 3 percent of people develop dementia between ages 65 and 74, and about 20 percent of people develop dementia between ages 75 and 84.

How is dementia diagnosed?

There is not one specific test that can be used to diagnose dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association(AA).

Dementia – including Alzheimer’s – is diagnosed based on a variety of factors all considered together, including medical history, physical exam, lab tests and evaluation of changes in thinking, according to the AA.

Having information about how a patient’s day-to-day life has suffered because of memory loss and cognitive function is also useful information physicians use to diagnose dementia, according to the AA.

Talk to your doctor for more information about how dementia is diagnosed.

How is dementia treated?

Choosing how to treat dementia depends on what type of dementia it is and what symptoms the dementia is causing, according to the National Institutes of Health(NIH).

A doctor can treat physical and behavioral issues caused by dementia, including aggression, agitation, or wandering, according to the NIH.

If someone has Alzheimer’s disease, it can be treated with prescription medication to help maintain thinking, memory, and speaking skills, according to the NIH. For some people it helps lessen some behavior problems for a few months or years. Treatment will not, however, stop Alzheimer’s from progressing.

Doctors can help someone with vascular dementia by providing treatment to help prevent future strokes, which could include treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, according to the NIH.

What is an aneurysm in the brain?

Dr. Ludwig discusses what an aneurysm is. Click play to watch the video or read the transcript.

What is an aneurysm in the brain?

A brain aneurysm is a weak spot in the artery in the brain. It can be located on any of the arteries that do supply the brain with its blood supply. That weak spot will tend to expand over time, and eventually can rupture if not treated.

The symptoms that would concern us for a brain aneurysm would be as follows. If somebody had the worst headache of their life, that is a clearly classic description of an aneurysm. It may have leaked or even bled. Again, these patients often times have had headaches, of course, in the past, but this would be something different. This would be, again, most people say the worst headache of your life. Often comes with nausea, vomiting. It can be sometimes related to even being comatose or knocking the person unconscious.

In addition to just the worst headache of your life, there are other subtle symptoms that can come along with a brain aneurysm that are a bit more rare, but need to be mentioned, which are everything from nerves not working quite right, meaning you have facial droop or you may have double vision, or any of the signs of classic stroke, where one side of the body's not working quite as well as the other side. In an aneurysm situation, that usually comes with also headache of some sort. If it's a stroke that is a low blood flow stroke, where an artery's been blocked and it's not supplying blood and they're having symptoms from it, headache is usually not associate with those. It's a little bit of a separator between a low blood flow stroke and a bleeding stroke. Headache is almost always associated with the bleeding strokes. Again, they tend to have some nausea and feeling sick to their stomach. It can be, again, associated with exertion. It may come with other nerve findings that are unusual, but all those should be taken seriously and get evaluated immediately.

An aneurysm is a balloon-like bulge in an artery, which is a blood vessel that carries oxygen-filled blood throughout the body, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A balloon-like bulge associated with any artery in the brain would be classified as a brain aneurysm. Most brain aneurysms have no symptoms until they are large, leak blood, or burst.

Can a person reduce their risk of developing a brain aneurysm?

Dr. Ludwig discusses reducing the risk of aneurysm. Click play to watch the video or read the transcript.

Can a person reduce their risk of developing an aneurysm?

An aneurysm can be caused by family history of having brain aneurysms, meaning you're more predisposed to having arteries that are a bit weaker, that may eventually develop into a ballooning or a sacular type aneurysm. It also can be aided by people who smoke cigarettes. Blood pressure and hypertension, specifically, can also be a risk factor for someone to have an aneurysm rupture, or even develop an aneurysm.”

One is, if you do have a family history of a brain aneurysm in a first degree relative, especially a ruptured brain aneurysm in someone that's a first degree relative, it's probably not unreasonable to have a screening done to make sure you're not also harboring an aneurysm, because again, if we can catch it early and treat it electively, the overall complication rates and prognosis are very, very good.

The second thing I tell most people is if you're a smoker, stop smoking. That's just the standard advice most doctors are saying, of course. Third thing is if you do have high blood pressure, try to control your blood pressure into a range that's considered normal. Work with your doctor, primary care doc to help with that process. Then exercise and just eating right, taking care of yourself also has been shown to be somewhat protective for just about any arterial problem in the body. Beyond that, there's not a whole host of things someone can do, necessarily, to try to ward off a brain aneurysm, and I think the most important next step in my advice is, there are treatments for it, and there are things we can do about it. If it's caught early, the prognosis is not as doom and gloom as most people associate with the word brain aneurysm, and that you've got a great team and you've got a good group of individuals from both preop to postoperative care, right here in Dayton that can take care of all these problems and have very good success with it.

While some risk factors for developing a brain aneurysm are out of a person’s control, other risk factors are things people can do their best to minimize, according to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation (BAF).

Some factors people can control to reduce the risk of aneurysms, according to the BAF, include:

Drug use, specifically cocaine

High blood pressure

Smoking

For more information about reducing your risk of a brain aneurysm, talk to your doctor.

How are brain aneurysms treated?

Dr. Ludwig discusses treatment for an aneurysm. Click play to watch the video or read the transcript.

How are brain aneurysms treated?

There are actually several options for treating brain aneurysms. They range from open surgical techniques, meaning you actually go in, opening the skull and removing the aneurysm by using a clip, to wait and watch, and surveillance of this, because some aneurysms inside the brain, strangely enough, don't need to be treated. It's actually more risky if you were to opt for a treatment plan, with certain categories of brain aneurysm, and that's why it's so important to have these patients come and talk to us, and go through the various options.

The one option we actually use most frequently now, because research and literature certainly support this type of care, is the minimally invasive treatment of an aneurysm, using what's called endovascular techniques, or similar models to what cardiologists do for the heart now, where they use wires and catheters through the arterial system instead of opening the chest and being directly involved with the heart, you use the already existing arterial system to allow you to transport your tools to the location in which you need them.

For our procedures, we tend to go through the arteries starting in the leg, all the way up into the head. Many patients are confused why we would take that route. The reason for that is safety. It's actually one of the easiest places to get into the arterial system in the body. It's a safe and well studied region of the body to both get in and get out without bleeding or an infection rate that's very high, so these are ideal situations for us, because we can then treat an aneurysm with making a tiny little incision just down at the leg and repair an aneurysm inside the head, and that's really all the patient has to show for it is this little tiny incision, it's less than a centimeter in length.

Treatment could include anything from monitoring the aneurysm to minimally invasive surgery to a surgery that requires opening the skull and entering the brain, according to Premier Health Specialists’ (PPN) physicians.

Talk to your doctor for more information about treatment for an aneurysm.

This website provides general medical information that should be used for informative and educational purposes only. Information found here should not be used as a substitute for the personal, professional medical advice of your physician. Do not begin any course of treatment without consulting a physician.